Bart Trek: Warped Core
by Scarabbug
Summary: Bart tries to boldly go where no man or woman or speedster, for that matter has ever gone before. Tim follows, albeit slightly reluctantly.


**There are many people who can be blamed for this... specifically John Finger and Gene Roddenberry. ****It's pretty old and has been extensively tidied up for you. I needed some Titans humour lately, what with the way things have been there lately. ****This story is for Trekkies, though can be enjoyed by anyone with at least a vague understanding of the function of warp drive and dilithium crystals. Much of the technical information used in this fanfic was obtained from the _Star Trek Encyclopaedia_, compiled by Michael and Denise Okuda. Yes, I am a geek. I'm okay with that. This is set earliy Teen-Titans so no real spoilers unless you're out of date. **

**  
Oh, and on another note of geeky joy… guess what they call the speed used by a starship in order to go into synchronous orbit around a planet? _Impulse drive!_ Ha! **

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Bart Trek: Warped Core.

Tim had never seen the workshop in quite such a… state, before.

Which was really saying something, considering that this was the Titans Tower. Cyborg was excruciatingly organized about these things, Mia only used a small corner of the room for her arrows, Kon could pretty much do most things bare handed and Cassie had never felt the need to come down here for any reason other than to try and locate her stray tweezers.

The reason for the current discord was crouched at the far side of the room, working quickly and uncharacteristically quietly on a series of buttons and panels and metal piping. Wires and coils of metal move absently around the room, appearing to vanish and reappear at intervals, the way books had shifted wildly about the San Francisco Library on the day Bart chose to become Kid Flash.

'Uh… Bart, is that you?'

Silly question. Of course it was Bart. Who else could have turned the entire metals workshop into the Central City junkyard in the space of an hour?

Bart's face appeared over the metal complex, his cheeks smudged with grease. 'Hi Tim, could you pass me the screwy-thingamabob over there oh never mind I'll get It.' something snatches the… screwy-thingamabob (more commonly known as a an electric drill) from where it lay on the table in front of Tim's face. He sees nothing.

'Bart, what in the name of…'

'Hold that thought,'

Bart's face appears from under the… the whatever he's making. It bears a slight resemblance to something Tim would expect to see on a low budget sci-fi movie, put together by a ten year old with sticky fingers. Another screwdriver vanishes and there are a few errant sparks from somewhere before Bart grins at him. 'Okay, now.'

Tim takes a deep breath. 'Alright then… what're you building?'

' Warp Drive Engine.'

Tim took a few moments to absorb that statement while feeling quite certain that he must have heard Bart wrong. Only he hadn't.

'I… uh… Pardon?'

Bart rolled his eyes as if it were completely obvious. '_Warp Drive Engine_, you know, the faster-than-light variety?'

'As in… as in "_To Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before_?"

'Uhuh. That's it. It's taking longer than I thought it would, though. Try not to step on those nacelles under your feet.'

Tim stared at the object taking over most of the workshop space in vague, bat-patented surprise. It was… rather impressive, actually, in a sticky sort of way. Large, circular, though somewhat irregularly put together. Wire upon wire of thick metal connected to steel rods and cables and lord only knew what else, coming together beneath a surface which looked very much like the bullet-proof fibreglass that Batman used on some of the jet's main components. (Tim made a mental note to check the caves supply-department for missing equipment when he got back). He'd always thought that Bart had a way with his hands and it obviously extended past the ability to draw.

Bart wiped the grease off his face and started messing around with what were clearly _live_ wires, super speed allowing him to simply dodge the electrons that were trying to shock him into submission. Somehow, Tim managed to find the logic to cross the room and turn the power off at the socket before one of them caught him up.

'Yeah they had a schematic of some kind of book I found in your room. What I couldn't get from that I got from Your Sci-Fi Fan guide magazines. It's really comprehensive.'

'You're building a… warp core?'

'Yup.'

'Oh.' Tim says, without adding: You realise this is totally illogical and never going to work? Because after all, this was Bart. 'I… what brought this on?'

'I dunno, just thought it'd be cool. I'm bored, there's nothing on TV and I've read all the books I can find.' (By "a_ll I can find"_ Tim knew Bart probably meant "_in every library in the local district_" and probably a few outside of that, too.) 'I mean, I can travel at almost the speed of light already, right? And according to the Star Trek Encyclopaedia I found in the San Francisco Library, that's how the Warp Core functions. Faster than light travel. So we know it's not _that_ difficult to get to warp factor 1 –that's the speed of light– while higher speeds would probably have to be computer generated geometrically under one or two different formula, so I have no idea how that would work.'

Tim subconsciously rubbed his nose and wished the alarms would sound, so he could go deal with the bad guys and not feel obliged to inquire into this further. Fortunately Bart was on a roll and saved him from speaking. 'I mean we already have androids, right? And stuff that can change into other stuff. And the thirtieth century might be totally different from what Gene Roddenberry though it would be, but hey, he was at least right about thinking that everyone on the planet would know how to read by the twenty-fourth century thing, even if it _is_ all in Interpol. Anyway, I thought maybe if we could do all that stuff, it'd be kinda cool.'

'And this motivated you to create… a functional war core?'

'Yup. I mean they don't show you everything on the inside, and some of the stuff they do show I don't think really _exists_. Not in this time, anyway. So I had to improvise with a lot of the stuff and there were some bits that were broken up and I had to go ask Red Tornado about those, and he seemed to have a good idea. By the way, Traya's asking us all to come round for dinner on Monday Night, if we can get there. Cissie'll be there. Speaking of Red Tornado, I betcha any money he watches way too much of The Next Generation, that's where all of his existential issues are coming from, don't you think?'

Several metal structures vanished and were reorganized into an oddly logical pattern around some of the gaps in Bart's project while Tim was busy deciphering what the heck Bart had just said. He didn't quite dare to mention that Bart sounded like the biggest geek Tim had heard since the time he got ambushed by… some girl with the angel on her shirt, or something, at a California comic books convention.

It was a pledge to the oddness of reality itself that the thought of having dinner with an android and his adopted family was _less_ surprising than Bart building science fiction devices in the tower.

Tim started playing around with a bunch of small memory chips on the counter mostly as a means to distract himself from the obvious insanity of it all. 'Oh… great. These came from Red Tornado, I suppose?'

'Yeah.'

'You just took them?'

'Oh, it's okay, he knows about it,' Bart rubbed his nose with grease stained fingers. I dunno where I'm gonna get the dilithilite crystals, though. I thought maybe kryptonite would work, but turns out that's no good because then Kon won't be able to come down here.'

'That's _dilithium_ crystals. Um, I mean…' Tim took a deep breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Just the way Dick had taught him.

'Oh, yeah, dilithium. Sorry. I must'a skimmed that bit. I was in a rush to find the stuff on warp coils.'

'How long have you been working on this?' Tim asked through gritted teeth. 'Subjectively, I mean?'

'Uh, long time,' Bart frowned. 'I phased out a bit, to make it faster.'

'In our time?'

'Forty minutes or so,' over two years in speedster time, Tim translates. That's even longer than Bart spent reading the San Francisco library 'I had to keep running over to Arizona, though, to check I've got everything right. Those guys at NASA are really nice, if you're a superhero. They even gave me a free coffee.'

Okay.

…Apparently the guys at NASA were crazy enough already for offering Bart information that would help in his construction of (Tim wasn't going to say it, he just _wasn't_) a fully functioning warp engine with nacelles and warp coils (damn, he said it, now he had to admit that it was real). To also offer him a caffeinated beverage, however, was just plain ludicrous.

In the last twenty seconds, Bart's machine had continued to come together. It appeared a lot less second hand, now, though still looked as if it's been constructed by someone constantly eating jam sandwiches as he worked. This being Bart, he probably had been. And it _did_ look very much like something from one of Tim's magazines. Smaller, perhaps, but innately complete.

Tim was not going to freak.

In through the nose, out through the mouth. In through the nose…

'Bart… you realise that this is never going to work?'

'What? Oh, _sure_ it is. Hey, you just need a little vision, Tim.'

'I'm serious,' Tim went on. 'You can't possibly have exactly emulated the internal schematics of a Warp Core. It's a fictional devise for television. Granted, they developed some pretty convincing schematics and fake blue prints to entice the more devoted fans, but it's still not _real_, Bart.'

'Oh, yeah… wow, Tim, you really are a big fan, aren't ya?'

Tim blinked. 'Uh, what?'

'Well, you said _devoted_ rather than _deluded_ or _obsessive_ or anything like that. Psychologists put a lot of emphasis on how people use singular words like that, you know.'

Sometimes Tim really missed Impulse, the same way he missed Cassie's goggles and Kon's bad fashion sense. He could rely on Impulse not to know at least the basic the theories of pretty much all forms of psychology and use them to try and get inside of Robin's head. _Impulse_ hadn't had a whole library or ten's worth of books inside his head. _Impulse's_ idea of exploring things scientifically had been to vibrate your head inside of them and see it they exploded.

'…Whatever. Look, Bart you have an imitation Warp Core sitting in the middle of the room, it's just _not_ going to work and even…' Tim is so glad that Kon isn't around to hear this. 'Even if it _was_ real and possible, how would you ever create the subspace bubble necessary for warp travel?'

'Huh?'

Tim guessed that Bart had skimmed that part of the encyclopaedia, too.

'Well, you can't travel without a subspace bubble to protect the time and space field, or you'd end up with subspace instability like… like what would happen if _you_ tried to speed without an aura. It'd just…' "_go splat_" he didn't say. Bart didn't need the visuals of what could happen to him if he ever reached near light speed without an aura, not that it was possible. For that matter, _Tim_ didn't need the mental images, either.

'Oh… Eww, that'd be _awful_.' Bart looked up, frowning. 'Damn, you're right Tim. This really won't work…'

Tim sighed in relief, even though Bart looked sorely disappointed, which was a pretty mournful sight. Tim felt kind of bad for him, after all, her _had_ spent two subjective years working on this thing, but still… 'Okay, well since you figured that out would you mind tidy—'

Bart's eyes suddenly lit up. 'Now I need to make the whole ship! I thought I could just stick this on one of our existing machines, but now I see that's really not practical at all. I'd better go back to the library and get those schematics and I dunno where… oh, never mind, I'll find them one way or another. Maybe NASA will help me out again. Thanks Tim!'

Bart has vanished from the room leaving Tim standing there with… an oddly humming piece of potential warp drive machinery, before Tim has time to protest.

He had the strong feeling that he was going to get the blame for this, whatever the repercussions turned out to be later on, and saw this as a cue to go remove the scientific journals and star trek guides from his bedroom.

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**Reviews? Concrit? Please, make it so. (Sorry, couldn't resist.) **


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